Blackboard Vista: Exporting Grades to a Spreadsheet

PDF version of this document: 08ExportGrades.pdf [337 KB].

The ability to export your Grade Book to Microsoft Excel offers you great flexibility. You can export grades just to maintain a backup offline or to use Excel to manage all your grading. Once the Grade Book is saved and opened in Excel, you can make modifications, re-save the file and upload it back into Blackboard Vista.

This capability to move back and forth enables you to manage, enter and calculate or curve grades more efficiently than within Blackboard Vista.

Here are a few suggestions and tips if you use Excel to manage your grades:

  1. Create and position your columns in the Grade Book first.
  2. Hidden columns do not export. So do not hide the User ID column because Blackboard Vista uses that column to match up the rows when you import data.
  3. Always make changes in Excel even if it is only one grade.
  4. Do not change grades in the Grade Book if you are using Excel. Importing from Excel overrides any changes that were made in the Grade Book.
  5. Wait until the add/drop period is over to export from Blackboard Vista since you cannot add rows in Excel. They will not import.

Before you begin exporting your Grade Book, be sure to create and position all your grade-related columns.


Step 1: Begin the Export

  1. From the Grade Book screen, click Export to Spreadsheet. The Export to Spreadsheet screen is displayed.
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Step 2: Select Column Information

  1. Under Members to Export, All Members is selected.
  2. Under Columns to Export, select Visible Columns to export the information in the columns on the tab where you began the export. To export all columns on all tabs, select All Columns.
  3. Under Select Export Format, leave the default setting, Comma-delimited (.csv file).
  4. Under Select Character Set, the default setting, Unicode (UTF-8) works fine for Excel.
  5. Click Export. Your browser’s File Download dialog box is displayed.
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Step 3: Save the File

  1. Click Save. The Save As dialog box is displayed.

Step 4: Rename and Save the File

  1. In the Save in drop-down list, navigate to the folder where you want to save the .csv file.
  2. In the File name text box, change the file name from “exportedcourse.csv.” You might want to use your course ID (In the example, we use sped5211.csv).
  3. Click Save.
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Step 5: Open the Excel File

  1. Minimize Blackboard Vista (not illustrated).
  2. Navigate to the folder where you saved the .csv file.
  3. Open the file. You can now make any changes to the data.

Step 6: Edit the Excel File

  1. Add your grades to the file. When you are finished editing the file, you must save it.


NOTE: If you want to use formulas to calculate grades, save the file as an Excel workbook file (.xls). Make any future changes in the .xls file and save as a .csv file before importing into Blackboard Vista.

Step 7: Save the File

  1. Click File, then Save (not illustrated). The Microsoft Excel information box is displayed.
  2. Click Yes.
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Step 8: Close Excel

  1. Close Excel (not illustrated). The Microsoft Excel information box is displayed.
  2. Click No. You have already saved the changes.
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